It’s about time that chefs and food-industry celebrities embraced frozen fish.
Yet the endorsement, reported in this week’s A la Carte, comes off as almost apologetic with eco-consciousness being cited as the primary reason. Delving deeper into Wednesday’s Washington Post article, readers will learn that there’s little — if any — discernible difference between fish frozen at sea and handled properly and a “fresh” product, according to elite chefs and even Food Network host Alton Brown.
It’s a concept this coastal native has explained numerous times over the years when discussing seafood purchased around the valley or ordered in restaurants. While “frozen” has long carried a negative connotation, many consumers aren’t aware that modern methods of flash-freezing and vacuum-sealing delivers a much fresher product than so-called “fresh” fish (provided it’s used within a reasonable period after purchasing).
Granted, it’s puzzling to people who have never observed the inner workings of the seafood industry. My mom and I used to chuckle when we encountered tourists at a small seafood market in Charleston’s boat basin. The shop’s name eludes me because we always referred to it, perhaps a tad disrespectfully, as “Fish With an Attitude.”
The market’s primary business was live Dungeness crab that could either be plucked from the tank and chauffeured home or cooked and consumed on site. Remaining inventory was housed in several large, wall freezers — package after vacuum-sealed package of local salmon, halibut and tuna. The owner’s response was delightfully predictable whenever a newcomer asked if they had fresh fish for sale.
“That’s isn’t a fresher fish anywhere,” the fishmonger barked.
When customers persisted through their obvious confusion, they were told to come back the next day to collect their fish on ice after it had thawed.
“Fish With an Attitude” was such a gold mine of local seafood precisely for its practice of flash-freezing and vacuum-sealing everything as soon as the boats came in. Why allow valuable product to languish in a refrigerator case on the hope that customers would realize the catch had arrived? Freezing preserved their investment, and they simply weren’t interested in the charade of thawing out a few packages each day to entice customers.
With most of the country’s wild, restaurant-grade seafood coming from Alaska, it’s understandable why only the highest-end eateries can afford to air-ship truly fresh fish at the expense, so Wednesday’s article noted, of the environment. And most restaurant customers simply aren’t willing to pay what it costs to serve a fish that was caught only a day or two prior, said Gabrielle McEntee-Wilson, vice president of public relations for Mo’s Restaurants in Newport.
Although Mo’s does serve local shrimp and oysters, it obtains most of its menu mainstays from Alaska. Despite fighting for years the perception that frozen fish is inferior, Mo’s business has never suffered because of it, McEntee-Wilson said.
“I don’t think people could tell the difference if you gave them a piece of fresh and you gave them a piece of frozen,” she said.
Fluctuations in fisheries notwithstanding, Mo’s has been serving primarily the same menu — made possible today by purchasing frozen seafood — throughout its 60-year run, a major reason that customers come back decade after decade. The restaurant that McEntee-Wilson’s great-grandmother founded on Newport’s waterfront has six locations from Florence north.
“We have lines out the door,” McEntee-Wilson says. “We keep everything really simple.”
Awash in frozen seafood, the coast does play host this time of year to local tuna, which Mo’s features on its specials menu. And because Newport’s fishing fleet does travel to Alaska, McEntee-Wilson said, eating frozen fish is actually eating closer to home than one might think.
“In the end, it does float back.”
